Page 43 of All Packed Up

“Really?” Wendy asked, a little skeptical.

“We both do,” Tate interjected. “The stock market stuff, I mean. On a normal day, I teach yoga at a feline rescue studio in town.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Arlo scolded him before turning to Wendy. “He owns it, he just doesn’t like to sound like an asshole.”

Tate’s cheeks flushed lightly, but he nodded. “Okay, fine, I own it.”

Wendy studied the muscles in his lithe frame a little more closely. They were defined, and the baggy shirt he was wearing probably concealed most of it.

What would he look like with his shirt off?

Wendy! Inappropriate.

Wendy stuck her tongue out at the voice in her head but redirected her thoughts anyway.

“When did you open it?”

“Two years ago? It’s fairly new.”

Arlo nodded in agreement and pointed to her cat. “I wasn’t even that surprised when he brought that guy home. He brings home strays all the time.”

“I brought home one stray. One!” Tate argued. “I take all the others to the shelter.”

“Yeah, now. Before you opened it, we were practically running a shelter out of the bushes behind the apartments.”

Wendy chuckled. A man who loved cats. She could relate.

“I got Knuckles from the bushes,” she told them. “He was all scuffed up, and the little white stripes on his paws were basically brown from all the dirt he was covered in. Almost like they were dirty knuckles, you know? So that’s how he got his name. Isn’t it, big boy?” she asked, cooing at the cat.

Tate chuckled at her and petted the cat between his ears. “He definitely seems very well taken care of now. You haven’t missed a meal, have you, buddy?” Tate tried to stick his hand beneath Knuckles’s belly and get a good scratch, but the cat reared back and chomped at the offending appendage. Tate, unfazed, just chuckled and wiggled his hand away from the cat’s sharp teeth. “Belly is off-limits, I understand.”

Knowing that Tate fostered and sheltered cats meant even more that Tate could recognize how much she loved Knuckles, even despite the situation. What this alpha thought of her or her cat shouldn’t even be on her mind.

Yet it was, and she liked it.

Before she could part her lips to tell him so, a knock echoed through the room.

Their gazes shifted to the front door, and dread slithered through her stomach. Wendy stood, wrapping the blanket around her tightly. She knew it wasn’t likely to be the alphas on the other side of the door, but she couldn’t quite convince her heart of that. It thumped behind her chest and raced harder as Arlo approached the door.

Curious, fearful, or maybe a glutton for punishment, she poked at the bond with Derek—and gasped as the bond flared. He was nearby, but not standing on the other side of C70.

But he might as well have been in the living room with them. He was pissed. Furious even. It burned through her, hot and fiery, and she tried to shut it down. Distantly, she heard the door shut, but couldn’t focus enough to care.

Looking for anything to distract her, Wendy steered her mind away from the bond, putting all her effort into ignoring it. But all she could feel was him. Bright, burning anger.

When Derek had marked her, she distanced herself from him even more than before. The bond was weak from the moment his teeth sank into her skin, and it had only gotten weaker since, but right then it felt like it was engulfing her.

“Wendy?” Tate asked, leaning down to catch her gaze. “You okay?”

Managing a shake of her head, she covered the bite on her neck, wishing she could carve it out of her skin, and stared up at the blond alpha. Why couldn’t she have been lucky enough to find someone like Tate?

“I can feel him in the bond,” she whispered, and Tate’s gaze hardened. His lips thinned into a terse line.

“Can you shut him out?” he asked. “It’s hard, but it’s possible.”

“I know,” Wendy whined. “I’m usually better at it, but he’s so furious.”

And if they ever got their hands on her again, she knew they’d be taking all of that fury out on her. She gasped for air as fear seized her chest at just the thought. Tate and Arlo and Nic and the apartment all faded away as Derek realized where she was.